Protected forest

A conservation group yesterday accused a military commander in Kampong Speu of smuggling two tonnes of illegally cut rosewood to Vietnam on Monday night. Chea Hean, director of the Natural Resources and Wildlife Preservation Organisation, said the commander had cut the timber in the protected Oral ...

Rights group Adhoc will take a complaint filed against a commune police officer accused of colluding with illegal loggers in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district to the provincial court today. The complaint, which villagers in Lbaing II commune filed with Adhoc on Friday, alleges that commune police officer ...

For the second time in as many weeks, an NGO has accused tycoon Try Pheap of facilitating illegal logging in a protected forest during the election campaign and post-election period, and with the protection of authorities. In a report set to be released today by the ...

Cambodia observed the Forest Day on Tuesday, urging people to plant trees in order to ensure the sustainability of forest and environment. The celebration was presided over by King Norodom Sihamoni and attended by Prime Minister Hun Sen and senior officials of the government, the parliament, ...

Monks residing in Koh Kong’s remote Areng Valley have begun raising funds online to renovate their local temple, despite plans in store for a large Chinese backed hydropower dam that would leave the site completely inundated. The 108-MW hydropower dam, to be built by ...

Communities living in the protected Snuol wildlife sanctuary in Kratie province said yesterday that the sanctuary was being destroyed by private companies acting in collusion with local wildlife officers. Snuol forest community representative Mom Sakim said private interests were claiming large areas of the sanctuary without ...

Eight ethnic Tampuon villagers from Ratanakkiri’s Bakeo district will file a lawsuit at provincial court today alleging that more than 70 hectares of protected forest have been illegally cleared by a police official and six villagers from a neighbouring commune. Ting Kham Se, 52, of Laminh ...

A Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RACF) official in Oddar Meanchey province said he would be happy to meet with community forestry members who say that new military bases are threatening their plans to sell millions of dollars worth of carbon credits to foreign companies in ...

Three companies accused of illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province are in possession of a combined 30,000 hectares of economic land concessions (ELCs) that are likely illegal because they are owned by the same parent firm. Hoang Anh Andong Meas, Hoang Anh Lumphat and Hoang Anh Ouyadav ...

BANGKOK: Demand for farmland may strip the Greater Mekong region of a third of its remaining forest cover over the next two decades without swift government action, a leading conservation group warned Thursday. Forests are being cleared for commodities such as rubber and rice while illegal logging is decimating ...

Local authorities and Ratanakkiri provincial forestry officials yesterday visited an area in O’Yadav district where community leaders say a Vietnamese company known as “Company 72” has razed an estimated 1,000 hectares of protected forest since 2011. “The villagers complained to the authorities many times, but ...

More than 40 hectares of protected forest in Rattanakiri’s O’Yadav district was razed by a Vietnamese company over the course of six days before they were stopped yesterday by villagers and investigators from rights group Adhoc, a local official said. Sav Hlin, a village chief in ...

A rights worker and forestry official yesterday contradicted a local newspaper report claiming that more than $100 million worth of timber had been illegally extracted from Ratanakirri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary. Adhoc’s provincial coordinator for Ratanakirri, Chhay Thy, denied having said a total of 16,000 ...

Families in Ratanakiri province yesterday logged a complaint with rights group Adhoc accusing a trio of economic land concession (ELC) owners of illegally logging outside of their concession areas and felling their vital resin and palm oil trees. Chan Naroun said she was among 29 families ...

More than 10,000 families have poured into an area of Prey Lang forest in Kampong Thom province since January, clearing 20,000 hectares of trees to sell as luxury timber and building houses, Prey Lang Community Network members claimed yesterday. Many are believed to be from ...

Two anti-logging activists who went into hiding yesterday have alleged that they received death threats from police because they set fire to logs cut from a protected area in Kratie province. The activists have been leading an increasingly confrontational campaign against Vietnamese firm Binh Phuoc Kratie ...

Community forest patrollers in Oddar Meanchey’s Samrong district say they were forced to return saws and timber they seized from illegal loggers after soldiers detained and threatened them on Sunday. The 27-member patrol, funded by development NGO Pact as part of the REDD+ carbon credit program, ...

A community forest patrol group trying to fight the destruction of protected forest in Kratie province’s Snuol district have, for the second time in two weeks, seized equipment from those they accuse of illegal logging. About 100 people from Svay Chreah, Snuol, Sre Cha, Pi Thnou ...

As many as 40 workers are cutting down trees, marking other trees they plan to fell in protected forest areas and piling up luxury timber in a flood-safety zone in Stung Treng’s Srekor commune, a local official said yesterday. Commune chief Seak Mekong said the workers ...

‘I heard a f—ing crazy dog say that we can’t dock in Kampong Saom, but we definitely can do that,” a crackling voice declares boisterously. The speaker, captured in video obtained by the Post, is part of an illegal timber syndicate. The identity of the speaker ...

Activists in Kratie province’s Snuol district seized seven chainsaws over the weekend and collected evidence that four police checkpoints were used to solicit bribes from illegal loggers, representatives of the network said yesterday. After scouring thousands of hectares of protected forest from Friday through yesterday, the ...

Preah Vihear province – The residents of this sleepy district, on the edge of the Boeng Per Wildlife Sanctuary, grow rice, cassava and cashew nuts. But in a few short years, Chinese investors envisage that Rovieng will be rapidly transformed into an industrial town. ...

Cambodia’s parliament on Friday approved a law providing financial guarantees for the developers of a planned hydropower dam on a Mekong River tributary, despite opposition from civil society groups seeking to delay the project. Villagers campaigning against the Lower Sesan 2 dam in northeastern Cambodia’s Stung ...

Yong Yim’s voice rises to a high-pitched quiver when she talks about a planned dam in the Areng Valley that would inundate land her family has inhabited for hundreds of years to form what amounts to a giant battery. Now they are staring at ...